New ptr post for 2.6.4

[Biomega]

That's kinda a bummer. Why people should work through an entire season to define a new build just to see everything removed at the end? It doesn't make sense.

If the buff carried over into NS, there's two things that would happen: either they leave the buff on forever, fundamentally altering NS; or they leave the buff on for a short time, likely resulting in GR records that you could never ever hope to beat ever again. Neither is a particularly good situation.

They did have things like season-only items that then carried over in the past, but that has apparently proven less than popular.

[shadowmatrix]

Everything you listed is basically done via farming and/or trading. Time consuming? Yes. But you don't need money for that. If you buy stuff for real money to take a shortcut then it's your fault. It's the same thing people did in D2 buying items for real money because it was faster, you will get this if trading is present 100% of the time.

I didn't mean free as in costing money I meant free as in doing anything you want. It is the same way people claim you could spec any way you wanted in vanilla WOW, you could but you wouldn't get very far during end game.

[Coldkil]

Where exactly is this powercreep people have been pointing out?

It's not in the single round of balancing/patch, it's the ongoing procedure of Blizzard just taking all the sets (or the underpowered ones) up to the most powerful ones with numbers that have reached already the "ridiculous" level (20000% multipliers, billions/trillions damage hits).

On paper, it works. You have 4 sets able to clear GR100, you want all the others to do the same. Problem is, that broad buffs don't solve anything since everything scales diffrently and someone will find another broken combo that does GR105, so next patch there's another round of broad buff for even more ridiculous numbers and so on.

That's power creep. The fact the game had difficulties up to Torment, then went T1, T2, T3 up to T13 shows how a) they're not controlling this thing and b) how they can up only with a bunch of names for new difficulties.

The increase in character power is way too fast and has huge jumps that make you ignore most of the game structure just to throw you at T13 and pushung GR as fast as possible. This is power creep, and why it's bad.

(i mean, power creep is what make you want to play more. the curve is completely screwed together with a basically nonexistent endgame).

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If the buff carried over into NS, there's two things that would happen: either they leave the buff on forever, fundamentally altering NS; or they leave the buff on for a short time, likely resulting in GR records that you could never ever hope to beat ever again. Neither is a particularly good situation.

Agree fully, and that's why i think this bonus is lame. You want to add new mechanics, new gear, new things to look forward to. Not a passive temporary buff that lets you play a fancy build for three moths. Also, seasonal ladders are wiped over time, so you don't even get that to remember.

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I didn't mean free as in costing money I meant free as in doing anything you want. It is the same way people claim you could spec any way you wanted in vanilla WOW, you could but you wouldn't get very far during end game.

Ok, got the point then. And i also agree - there's freedom as in you can build over any main skills combination and be successful; though that's just about it - you have to pay attention to passives and you're kinda locked into some ones, you need a mobility skill, auras, also some combo while not mandatory are extremely recommended, etc.

There's definitely way more freedom of choice than in D3 (which has next to none). It's just a fact - PoE is a great game. Graphics are not good, it's not really easy for newcomers but the depth and gameplay are top notch. And that's what you want; players feel involved in it and stay in it.

[Deleted]

Holding my powder on this a bit but my initial reaction is... where the fuck is the rest of the patch notes?


Buffing sets is fine, but I already played most of the standard builds we have now, I want to play something a bit different, not the same thin but 10 GRs higher.

If they add in some more notes adding new legendary powers or buffing existing ones I will play, if not, I'm done.

[Biomega]

Agree fully, and that's why i think this bonus is lame. You want to add new mechanics, new gear, new things to look forward to. Not a passive temporary buff that lets you play a fancy build for three moths.

But isn't that what seasons were supposed to be? Have been, during their earlier days? Nobody was happy with the last few seasons were everything was the exact same except for some random QoL buff. This buff is the closest to a truly different season we've had in YEARS.

[Puupi]

Buffing the damage of these sets make the gameplay even more bullshit.

Sure, you have the damage to clear higher level rifts, but if anything hits you - you are dead.

I fucking hate one shot mechanics.

[mrgreenthump]

The powercreep comes from the leap frogging that sets have been doing. Set A is op, they buff set B, then set A is trash compared to B so they buff it to be OP again. That has basically been the cycle of seasons so far. What you end up with are the ridiculous numbers in the PTR notes.

There is no balancing going on. None of these changes feel like they were well thought out, it's just "Let's slap on some bigger numbers and let the community figure out if it's good or not". You wanna talk about a game that's too easy? What do you think torment 13 will be once these set buffs are live? Faceroll. I've only dabbled in greater rifts but I imagine the buffs and the set rings will push the limits another few levels.

There are no steps to improve anything in this PTR.

T13 is already a joke with any full class set. This is an attempt to bring parity at the high end. Condemn Crusader has cleared 130 on live, Starpact Wiz has done 129 and other classes apart from Necro are struggling to do above 122s. 9 GR levels roughly equates to 4x the monster health, so they aren't far off with the initial numbers. Now some of these buffs are a bit too high if their intention is to bring true parity, but it's still a step in the right direction.

It's not in the single round of balancing/patch, it's the ongoing procedure of Blizzard just taking all the sets (or the underpowered ones) up to the most powerful ones with numbers that have reached already the "ridiculous" level (20000% multipliers, billions/trillions damage hits).

If we assume D3 is not in active development, what is there to do than just trying to buff the underperforming sets. You cant just rework the whole system as that would require months of active development time and more than one or two people keeping the lights on which this seems to be.

Do I want more. Absolutely, but at the same time I gave my hopes from D3 a long time ago. The game has no additional monetization, so there really isn't any point expecting Activision-Blizzard developing it at all. This patch even seems like a panic move after they had to cancel their Blizzcon plans.

My point really is, that this is one of the only moves to bring some change into the game with barebones crew and without wrecking it totally in the process. The damage to Diablo 3 was done a long time ago. Reaper tried to repair it and it succeeded in some aspects, but it also removed a lot of the difficulty you faced in Vanilla D3. They openned a box that they can't close anymore with the set buffing and GR leaderboards, you would erase a thousands of hours of effort from people if you suddenly nerfed sets to somewhat sensible level. Not saying it couldn't be done with enough development time, but I doubt they have such allocations for the development time to begin with.

[Lolsteak]

Apparently they've been working on this for months

Absolutely atrocious

[mrgreenthump]

Sure, you have the damage to clear higher level rifts, but if anything hits you - you are dead.

Last time I pushed the gameplay was even more retarded. You entered a GR, checked the layout and mob type and more often than not you just exited the GR, because you had a bad layout and/or no density. But when you had the density, there was no real chance of dying because of legendaries synergizing with high density. So in the end it just was about hunting the right sort of rift and just not having enough damage to clear it in time.

Not there aren't one-shot mechanics, there are. Particularly on some of the rift guardians, and oh boy does it suck to get a bad rift guardian after clearing a GR that you would barely have the damage to complete in time. One-shot mechanics themselves even isn't the problem, the problem is that some of them are just impossible to dodge.

[Vakna]

The powercreep comes from the leap frogging that sets have been doing. Set A is op, they buff set B, then set A is trash compared to B so they buff it to be OP again. That has basically been the cycle of seasons so far. What you end up with are the ridiculous numbers in the PTR notes.

There is no balancing going on. None of these changes feel like they were well thought out, it's just "Let's slap on some bigger numbers and let the community figure out if it's good or not". You wanna talk about a game that's too easy? What do you think torment 13 will be once these set buffs are live? Faceroll. I've only dabbled in greater rifts but I imagine the buffs and the set rings will push the limits another few levels.

There are no steps to improve anything in this PTR.

The fact that you've only dabbled in Greater Rifts makes you wholly unqualified to make that judgement. Go take a brief glance at the top 100 solos, literally every single one of them uses the same set because it's better than all the others. All these changes have done is bring the unused sets inline with the best ones. For example, all the top wizards use Firebird because it simply does the most damage, Firebird didn't get any changes in this PTR patch, but sets like Tal Rasha and Vyr received some help to bring them on par with the damage output of Firebirds.

So where's this supposed massive increase in damage coming from? 1 item less in set bonus? Nope, because when you're pushing super high rifts pretty much all your slots are locked to items you absolutely need - such as toughness pieces to help Wizards survive. Needing 1 less piece on your 6 set isn't going to mean you don't need those toughness items anymore and can squeeze in another 2 set somewhere. There is gonna be some shimmying around sure, and some classes might get a couple extra rift levels out of it, but saying it's power creep shows you don't understand how it works, you'd get the same result by extending the season another week and letting people grind more Paragons.

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T13 is already a joke with any full class set.

Not true at all. The vast majority of classes and sets would get absolutely rekt in T13 if that's all you went in with. You need a good number of toughness (multipliers, not flat stats) before calling T13 a joke, and a lot of the sets don't even do enough damage to kill T13 elites in a reasonable time.

Might be a joke if you go in there with 3k Paragons, but implying you can jump from T1-T13 with any class and any set immediately is severe misinformation.

[Cairhiin]

Last time I pushed the gameplay was even more retarded. You entered a GR, checked the layout and mob type and more often than not you just exited the GR, because you had a bad layout and/or no density. But when you had the density, there was no real chance of dying because of legendaries synergizing with high density. So in the end it just was about hunting the right sort of rift and just not having enough damage to clear it in time.

Not there aren't one-shot mechanics, there are. Particularly on some of the rift guardians, and oh boy does it suck to get a bad rift guardian after clearing a GR that you would barely have the damage to complete in time. One-shot mechanics themselves even isn't the problem, the problem is that some of them are just impossible to dodge.

This is quite a huge problem with GRs and part of the reason I really dislike them. There is an enormous difference between an angel and a zombie GR, and between an open layout and tight dungeon layout; and as you said even between Rift Guardians. The whole system is trash.

[lolbubble]

Holy shit every set bonus damage increased by 300%, grift 1000 is now possible!!

Doesn't anyone in this thread have a phone?

[mvaliz]

I foresee getting a pair of Lacuni Prowlers as my Primal.

Really? I'm thinking a piece of Blackthornes or a Nagelring/puzzle ring myself! >.>

[Teri]

I foresee getting a pair of Lacuni Prowlers as my Primal.

Or any of the still over a dozen non-affix legendary still in the game.

Going from 2.6.1 to 2.6.4 seems like a subtle stab.

Best change is LoN from 100% to 500%.

[mvaliz]

Apparently they've been working on this for months

Absolutely atrocious

My money is on the past 3+ weeks post-blizzcon... this is probably them attempting to "give the PC Diablo players" a sense of getting something... while simultaneously giving you absolutely nothing in reality. =/

[MrPaladinGuy]

Neat primal changes, but I'd still prefer some type of indicator on the gear icons that means it's part of a set in your armory.

[Beazy]

looks like they are shaving off about 45 minutes of grind by giving you a RoRG? That is just stupid. . . . oh well.

Guess ill stick to working on my arc lightning totem Templar in PoE.

[Cairhiin]

looks like they are shaving off about 45 minutes of grind by giving you a RoRG? That is just stupid. . . . oh well.

Guess ill stick to working on my arc lightning totem Templar in PoE.

It has obviously nothing to do with the 45min required to grind for a RoRG but the fact it opens up an item slot for something else. It's not that bad of a season bonus, and much better than the double Goblin bonus. Many builds don't even use a RoRG.

[Volitar]

Well it's a lot better than I thought we would get for a game that is in maintenance mode.

They buffed the sets that were too shitty to play in recent seasons and the free RORG buff means there will be some slight variations. I haven't played in a while I think I will actually check it out when it comes live.

[Puupi]

Well it's a lot better than I thought we would get for a game that is in maintenance mode.

They buffed the sets that were too shitty to play in recent seasons and the free RORG buff means there will be some slight variations. I haven't played in a while I think I will actually check it out when it comes live.

Well you don't expect much, do you?

The changes are what anyone can do after taking a look at excel for 15 minutes and then changing a few numbers in the code.